


Paradox, meet Uncertainty

by Dawnwind



Category: Numb3rs
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-14
Updated: 2011-04-14
Packaged: 2017-10-18 02:10:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/183830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dawnwind/pseuds/Dawnwind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charlie has to go up in a helicopter, and the thing looks mathematically unsound.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paradox, meet Uncertainty

The helicopter spiraled down out of the blue like a prehistoric insect about to attack the ground crew of the tiny Pasadena airfield. Sunlight reflected off the shiny red and blue belly of the bug, the curved glass windshield appearing to shimmer with a thousand rainbows when the chopper hovered twenty feet above, orienting toward the earth. It landed with a distinct bounce on the spindly metal struts, the rotary blades clicking as they slowed. Even at half speed, the wind they produced kicked up sand and gravel, pummeling the group waiting at one side of the runway.

Charlie Eppes shielded his eyes, wishing he could back up and make a dash for the car in the parking lot without anyone noticing. He'd expected a plane, not a huge version of a children's toy.

"Ready to go, Charlie?" Don Eppes, Charlie's older, and if not wiser, then perhaps more adventuresome, brother asked. He ducked his head to make a run under the now barely moving blades on top of the helicopter.

"Uh -- Don, you know, I just got to thinking -- I really should get back to Cal Sci. I told Larry I'd help with his Quantum Physics for dummies seminar. It's getting late and..." Everyone knew that by all logic a helicopter shouldn't fly. Oh, sure, mathematically, Charlie could determine the probability of such a craft climbing into the air, and usually that would be sufficient to calm his unsteady nerves, but paradoxes were simply a fun method of whiling away the time, not vehicles for transporting living, thinking, beings from one place to another.

"Whoa, time out." Don made like an umpire on the football field, frowning. "You said you really needed more measurements of the crime scenes to get enough data for analysis."

"Oh, yeah!" Charlie bobbed his head with what he hoped was enthusiasm. "I did. And I have some. The one from last week -- I've already started comparing it to the other two in Riverside and Ontario. Really useful."

"But the original murder, and the most recent one were up on the mountain, in Running Springs and Green Valley Lake," Don said. He narrowed his eyes shrewdly. "Won't it skew the results, not to mention the fact that this killer is working such divergent locations, if you don't include this information?"

"You can get it for me!" Charlie dumped a metal measuring tape, some calipers, and binoculars into his brother's arms, shouldering his bookbag to keep the already computed equations safe from the helicopter windstorm. "Just remember to adjust for the weather. Probably was snowing up there yesterday, right?"

"Right." Don shifted the load, tucking the measuring tape into the pocket of his sports coat. "But you've said yourself that I'm not the world's best at measuring things."

"When we're building bookshelves -- that's one thing," Charlie hedged, squinting at the pilot of the helicopter who'd gotten out of the bug and was standing watching the Eppes brothers with an churlish expression. "Like I said, Quantum Physics... Can I take your car?"

"No." Don smiled that odd little smile that always meant he was amused and inordinately fond of his younger brother, even if said younger brother drove him nuts on regular intervals. Charlie felt his belly sink to the level of his knees. "Charlie, you've flown in a plane before."

"Flown, yes, lots of times. Statistically, planes are far safer than cars. In fact, I should probably grab a plane back to the house. Better than going down the freeway at this time of day with all the road rage and stress."

"So, grab your whachamacallit," Don handed back the calipers. He held the binoculars up to his eyes as if checking the focus, looking over at the chopper. It must have appeared huge through the lenses. It already looked gigantic from Charlie's unaided perspective. "And strap yourself in," Don said, looping the binocular strap around his neck.

"That, Don, is not a plane."

"Ah, now we get to the crux of the problem."

"This." Charlie shook his head, his overly long curly bangs dipping annoyingly into his eyes. "This is not a problem. This is a helicopter -- with open sides. A problem is 4 billion and twenty seven divided by 8 thousand to the twelfth power."

"That would certainly be a problem for me," Don agreed. He linked his arm through Charlie's, towing him forward. "C'mon, we have seat belts, we have headphones, and the FBI needs this killer caught, Charlie. Five murders, all gruesome, and we don't know where he'll strike next. Your mathematical abilities have helped us solve some of the toughest crimes that have hit our department in the last six months. Without your analysis to help us catch him, this guy will probably kill even more teenaged girls."

Charlie groaned, ducking down when Don propelled him under the rotary blades and into the rickety looking contraption. That was low; buttering him up, and appealing to his sense of justice. He couldn't let his fear -- no, make that completely appropriate concern for the safety -- of helicopter flight get in the way of finding the bastard who had strangled, raped, and mutilated blond high schoolers. He fumbled with the seat straps, pulling them extra tight to make up for the fact that there was no barrier between him and the rest of the world. The open side of the helicopter gaped like a yawning maw threatening to expel him at any moment. It would be the first time Charlie Eppes had ever been expelled from anywhere, and he wanted to keep his unblemished record intact.

Don settled a bulbous pair of earphones on his head and adjusted the tiny mic in front of his mouth. He gestured for Charlie to do the same, but Charlie ignored him, watching the pilot prepare for lift-off.

"What's the load bearing capacity of a craft like this?" Charlie asked, trying to sound innocent and interested, not suspicious and terrified.

The pilot barely glanced back, flicking switches and setting dials. "The limit is about 400 pounds of humanity. You wanna get out now, do so before we get up in the air."

Don rolled his eyes, as if searching the ceiling for understanding.

Charlie sat back, feeling more in his element, translating the helicopter into the much more comforting elements of potential altitude, forward speed, and angular momentum. Well, at least the numbers added up, which was eminently reassuring, but when the chopper suddenly raised off the tarmac with an ear-splitting growl from the engines, Charlie grabbed the edge of the seat in a death grip.

"Put this on!" Don shouted over the rattle of the overhead propeller blades. He shoved the earphones on a trifle too roughly and apologetically tucked Charlie's curls out of the way of the headband. "Can you hear me?"

The din was much reduced and Charlie pushed the small mic into place. "Yes. How long will this take?"

Don laughed, "You figure it out, math geek. It's about fifty miles up to Running Springs, and we're going roughly one hundred fifty miles per hour."

Simple as first grade arithmetic. Charlie nodded, taking a deep breath. Twenty minutes in the air -- one way. He could do this, if only the wind weren't walloping him from both sides. It was like riding through a category four hurricane, on purpose. He had sudden sympathy for Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz movie his father always insisted on watching every spring. Alan had a thing for Glinda, the good witch.

What had possessed some demented aeronautical engineer to create a craft without sturdy, all encompassing walls? A design flaw, he was sure of it.

"Hey!" Don yelled. "This Quantum Physics class for dummies, when is it?"

"Tuesday afternoon."

"Damn, I'll be at a briefing. Can you give me a preview?" He'd donned a pair of black sunglasses and Charlie wondered absently why he never looked quite as self-assured and ready for action as Don did. Probably had something to do with his own baby face and perpetually unruly curls. He fit the profile of head-in-the-clouds math professor and Don was the much more down-to-earth and practical FBI agent. "That uncertainty thing?" Don persisted.

"I've explained that to you before."

"Maybe you have, but I didn't get it." Don hunched his shoulders, pulling his jacket closer around him. It was getting cold as they flew closer to snow capped Big Bear Mountain, and Charlie was glad he was wearing the llama fur sweater Larry had brought back from that Astrophysics convention in Peru.

Peru made him think of higher mountains, and plane crashes. Hadn't some soccer team crashed somewhere in South America and taken to eating each other before help arrived? He applied himself to Don's question, rubbing his chilly hands together. "It's not really my field, but I understand the basics."

"That's what I'd need, the basics."

"The uncertainty principle. Heisenberg showed that we can never really know absolutely everything about the behavior of even one particle. That by the simple act of observation, we have changed its actions..." Charlie began, expounding on his subject. "When a proton strikes an atom, boosting an electron into a higher orbit, the electron moves from the lower to the upper orbit instantaneously, without having traversed the intervening space..." Much the same as a helicopter moved, he thought with a shudder.

Charlie nattered on about the philosophical paradox of something being both a wave and a particle until Don's eyes, at least what he could see of them behind the sunglasses, seemed to be glazing over. "You're trying to distract me!"

"Did it work?" Don grinned.

"Yeah, I guess it did," Charlie admitted, amazed to realize they were now much closer to the mountains and he could see tiny cars speeding along the curving switchback roads that led up the steep side. Here and there he spotted houses and small towns. Running Springs must be coming up soon. "Were you really interested?"

"Yeah, Charlie, I was. You make that stuff a lot more palatable than any professor I ever had in college. You're a good teacher."

Charlie couldn't help the goofy smile that broke out, pride warming his chest. Good thing, too, since the ambient air was about 25 degrees as the helicopter swung in a stomach churning circle and landed them on the grassy flat of the local football field.

"Y'know, if you're interested." He sighed in relief as the engine noises cut off, and the whirling blades clacked to a stop. He took off his headphones at the same time as Don did. "There's a play called Hapgood, by Tom Stoppard, at the Parkside theater. You'd like it. Spies embroiled in a case of mistaken identity, using Heisenberg's principle as the underlying theme. You want to go?"

"Sure, Charlie, I do. I'll spring for sushi if you buy a couple tickets." Don shivered, grimacing at the clumps of snow visible on the edges of the playing field. The pilot had already gotten out to confer with some guys in overalls, and a tall man in a uniform complete with a Smokey the Bear hat who had to be the local sheriff was stomping through the icy grass to the chopper. "You ready to go?"

"It's now or never," Charlie gathered up the bookbag full of his calculations and statistics and clambered out of the helicopter. On solid ground, it was easy to forget the fact that he would have to go back up again in that Plexiglas whirligig when they were done. Right now, there were sobering clues to collect, and a grim job ahead of them.

Charlie trudged after his brother and the sheriff, watching Don interact with the officials involved in the serial murder case. Heisenberg was right, you never could quite see what you were looking at in all its details. His brother, now all efficient FBI, had just about held his hand throughout the flight, and never once teased Charlie for his fear of helicopter travel. Was he the protective older brother, or the somber faced agent on a mission to catch a criminal? Both, and neither, at the same time. People are far more complex than any orbit jumping electrons, and every bit as uncertain as Heisenberg ever was. Each side of Don required Charlie to create the whole person -- did that make him the proton or the electron? Don Eppes needed his sibling to be a brother, and Agent Eppes needed the math professor to catch the criminal. Contradictions and paradox in everyday life.

We all use mathematics, everyday.


End file.
